The Lebanese Post-Civil War Novel - (Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict) by Felix Lang (Hardcover)

About the Book

"After the Lebanese Civil War, many of Lebanon's best known novelists committed themselves to building a "memory for the future." More than twenty years later, Elias Khoury's and Rashid al-Daif's postwar novels rank among the most important texts in contemporary Arabic literature and a new generation of authors has begun writing about the civil war. The role of collective and individual trauma seems to be central to this development. However, as this book will show, the Lebanese Post-civil war novel is a response not so much to trauma, but to the forces at work in the literary field. From the book market to literary prizes and the similarity of the writers' biographies and socio-economic backgrounds, a number of factors worked in favor of novels offering a literary war narrative for Lebanon's secular upper-middle class"--

Book Synopsis

After the Lebanese Civil War, many Lebanese novelists committed themselves to building a "memory for the future." What resulted was a vital contribution to the legacy of contemporary Arabic literature. Through interviews, literary analysis, and the lens of trauma studies, Lang sheds light on what it means to remember through post-war literature.

Review Quotes

"This book is a well researched and serious study of two decades of Lebanese novelistic production in English, French, and Arabic. Lang's frank discussion of the forces at play in the Lebanese literary field brings out the grain of generational literary production in Lebanon. His deft analyses of the civil war theme acknowledges but goes beyond trauma theory and 'the memory industry.' His book will appeal to literary critics, anthropologists, and humanists interested in the cultural life of the Levant as well as those interested in next-generation trauma studies." - Ken Seigneurie, Professor of World Literature, Simon Fraser University, Canada

"Felix Lang brings together several theoretical tools, mainly -but not only- Pierre Bourdieu's sociological analysis of the literary field as a locus of struggle for symbolical power. We discover with this book how the notions of memory and trauma are being used and remodeled by these writers, and we feel compelled to read, re-read, or teach the great novels of the likes of Elias Khoury, Rachid El Daïf, Hoda Barakat or Rawi Hage from new perspectives." - Richard Jacquemond, Professor of Modern Arabic Language and Literature, Aix-Marseille Université, France

About the Author

Felix Lang is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Arabic Literature and Culture at the University of Marburg, Germany.